Nicholson is the most nominated actor in the history of the Academy Awards, winning three Oscars for his roles in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “As Good as It Gets” and “Terms of Endearment.”

“I’m not going to work until the day I die, that’s not why I started this. I’m not driven. I was driven — but I’m not, I don’t have to be out there anymore,” he said previously. “In fact, there’s part of me that never really liked being out there. You get older, you change.”

Last year Nicholson’s pal Peter Fonda, who starred with him in 1969’s “Easy Rider,” said: “I think he is basically retired. I don’t want to speak for him but he has done a lot of work and he has done very well as a person financially.”

Speaking at the glitzy BAFTA Tea Party event in LA, Fonda added: “Sometimes people have a reason that you don’t know, and it’s not for me to ask. I don’t call him up and say, ‘Johnny,’ I call him Johnny Hop, ‘What are you doing?’ I would say, ‘How are you, how do you feel?’ ”

Nicholson previously admitted that he had decided to scale back his partying, explaining: “I’m still wild at heart but I’ve hit bio-gravity.”